Flight Delayed? How to Connect to Airport Wi-Fi to Pass the Time

With tightened airport security, airline travelers around the world are increasingly finding themselves victims of “hurry up and wait.”

Although airlines urge passengers to get to airports early – sometime three or four hours in advance of their flights – passengers often wind up waiting much longer than that because of unpredictable fight delays or cancellations.

For many people, getting online – to surf or read email – is a simple way to make time fly, far more relaxing than watching water boil or an airport terminal clock move slowly. But getting online isn’t always easy when you’re at an airport.

The problem solver

Anil Polat is a blogger, computer security analyst and avid traveler who set a personal goal of trying to visit every country and has already been to 90 of them. Needless to say, he’s been at a few airports along the way.

More pertinent to this article, he’s crowd-sourced an interactive map to help airline travelers identify airport Wi-Fi passwords when free Wi-Fi isn’t available.

To create the map, he collected Wii-Fi passwords by asking Facebook and Twitter users for airport passwords they had picked up in their travels; he updates the map regularly to reflect any changes they report to him.

Before you leave home

If an airport doesn’t offer free Wi-Fi, you can check out Polat’s map below.

When you’re at the airport

Because many flyers only find out they can’t get Wi-Fi until after they’ve already arrived at the airport, Polat has created an app called WiFox, available at the App Store and on Google Play and Amazon for $1.99.

WiFox provides the same interactive map of international airport Wi-Fi hotspots and their passwords (as well as a searchable list, if you aren’t a map person). But the app can be used offline without an Internet connection.

Irene S. Levine, Editor and Publisher of GettingOnTravel, also writes regularly for GOT. An award-winning travel writer, she has written hundreds of articles for leading North American magazines and newspapers. She also publishes her own travel blog, "More Time to Travel." She is a member of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) and the North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA).